New Latino Network Launches with Obama Interview

27 Oct 2013

On Monday night, ABC News and Univison are launching a new cable network called Fusion. The target audience is young Latinos, and the first interview shown will be with Barack Obama. Just minutes after the network starts broadcasting, viewers will see Obama being interviewed by Fusion White House correspondent and ABC News senior national correspondent Jim Avila on the show “AMERICA with Jorge Ramos.”

Sometimes we’ve felt that we were invisible. And we are invisible, I would say, for three years, and then they rediscover us every four years, around election time, and then they forget about us again. I call it the Christopher Columbus syndrome, it happens all the time, they rediscover us every four years. And hopefully Fusion is going to stop that. If we are successful, I think we can change the way politics is being covered in 2016. We’re always trying to be noticed and be visible, and if Fusion is working fine, in 2016 all the candidates would want to be on Fusion to reach the Hispanic community and the young audience.

Obama suddenly wants to be seen on Univision; in September he excluded them from interviewing him when he spoke about Syria. Ramos tweeted at the time:

Pres. Obama gives 6 interviews today. None of those to Univision. Why? Hispanics also care about Syria. Same mistake as presidential debates” and later tweeted “150,000+ Latinos are serving in the U.S. military. But none of the 6 interviews given today by Obama include Univision #LessonsNOTLearned.”

Parts of the Fusion interview will also be broadcast on ABC and Univision.